Ghosts
by Ninjacat
Summary: In a life after Sasuke, Naruto and Sakura pick up the pieces and salvage a life without him. Written five years ago; a very grim What-If tale.


Haruno Sakura is married to Uzumaki Naruto, and Naruto is married to his ghosts.

They're her ghosts as well, or at least one of them is, and if she ever forgot it – which she never will – it is almost certain that Naruto would remind her.

"He should be here," he says, so often that sometimes she wonders who loved _him_ more in the end, and she touches his shoulder and tells him, "I know."

Naruto used to reply that no, she didn't. He stopped on their wedding day, but sometimes he still says, "He should be here, _he_ should be your husband, not me."

She used to agree with him.

Sakura is older now, perhaps wiser as well – she doesn't _tell_ Naruto she agrees.

At least not any more.

* * *

The Godaime Hokage told Naruto she was dying when he was seventeen, and he called her a bitch and walked away.

He told her later that she couldn't get out of her responsibilities because she was feeling old.

"You're _barely_ sixty, what the hell are you talking about, _dying_?" he had snarled, refusing to listen and understand what exactly Tsunade was trying to tell him. The thought of her dying, the thought of her dead, was far too painful to think about when the wounds from all the other deaths around him had barely healed.

It took three months before Naruto would finally listen, and if Sakura hadn't helped her talk to him, he may never have understood at all. He swore at her and cursed her, he cried and said she never should have saved him at all, those years ago. Should never have released her seal.

"But I did," she said, "and I don't regret it at all, you ungrateful little brat."

Naruto swore harder, his head in his hands until she touched his forehead with her index finger. He remembers looking up at her, eyes filled with anger and hurt and feeling somehow betrayed.

"Not you, too," he whispered, and Tsunade kneeled in front of him and reached forward, snagging the chain of her necklace from around his throat. She tugged it gently until it fell from behind his shirt, fingering the jewel and not allowing Naruto's gaze to slip away from hers for a second.

"You will be the Hokage–"

"Is that supposed to _console_ me!"

She narrowed her eyes and flicked his forehead, made him shut up and _listen_ for once.

"You will be the Hokage, _before_ my death, if I can help it. I saved your life so that I could see your dream come true, boy. I will see you become a good man yet." Tsunade kissed his forehead, pressing her necklace into his hand and closing his fingers around it.

"And don't think offing me early will get you in the Hokage's chair anytime soon, Naruto," she smirked. "Dying or not, kyuubi or no, I've still got enough in me to kick your ass with one finger any day."

Naruto laughed bitterly at that, fingers trembling around the necklace, a knot growing so tight in his chest he could barely breathe. Tsunade left, thankfully, before he had dissolved so completely into tears that he wasn't even aware that Sakura was still there.

She was still alive for his wedding day the next year, and his inauguration as the Rokudaime Hokage when he was twenty. She kissed his forehead in front of the entire village while Sakura held his hand, standing at his side and she whispered, "I'm happy for you, Naruto."

Tsunade told him she was proud of him, and six months later she had died. Naruto didn't cry like he thought he might – at least not that first night – but there was little anyone could think to say to console an obviously wounded young man.

That duty fell mostly upon his wife, whose shoulder he rested his head on in the darkest hours of night, even though she didn't know what to say either. The night she died, with the village in mourning all around them, Sakura tried to say, "She died content, didn't she? She lived to see you become Hokage. She lived long enough to see you become a good man–"

Naruto's laugh echoed dully in their bedroom and he felt himself turn away from her. "Hokage, yeah. Not much else. I failed her."

He didn't say, _The way I failed you, the way I failed Sasuke,_ yet she seemed to hear it hanging heavily between them anyway. It was one of the strangest moments in their marriage, because for once, she wanted to tell him he was wrong.

Sakura said nothing and the moment slipped away.

* * *

Naruto is drunk tonight.

He is far more affectionate than usual when he's like this; never angry, never hurtful. He is quiet and gentle and his blue eyes are red-rimmed and glisten like open wounds.

Sakura can't bear to look at him, but she'll hold him when he lays his head on her breast and wraps his arms around her waist. She kisses his forehead and the questions come. They always do.

He nestles his face into her blouse and his words are muffled from the fabric and clumsy from the alcohol, but he always speaks.

"You don't love me, do you?"

The question isn't what she was expecting, and she runs her fingers down his arms, peering down at him questioningly.

"Do you love _me,_ Naruto?"

His laughter is quiet, pained – because he does. Sakura knows that he does. She continues, "If you wanted someone who would love you, you should have married Hinata."

Naruto laughs again, sighing against her chest and hugging her tighter.

"I guess so. Shouldn't you have married Fuzzy-Brows? He would have made you happy."

Sakura says nothing. She doesn't want to think about it, but he would have. She knows this, and Naruto knows this too.

They both say nothing and he only holds her closer.

* * *

Some days, when Sakura wakes in the morning and Naruto is absent from her side and his headband is missing from the bedside table, she knows he has forgotten.

Naruto is the _Rokudaime Hokage_ and has no need to wear the forehead protector anymore, yet it never leaves their bedroom...except on these days. They are rare but inescapable.

Most of the villagers knows these days happen sometimes, and most of them don't care. Sakura has heard that some of the villagers think it makes him more human, to grieve so _deeply_ for human comrades that the demon they thought him to be would surely not care about.

It _is_ grief, as she knows, a grief so profound that Naruto simply…forgets, some days.

Naruto goes to their old training grounds, under the palest stretches of sunlight, as if maybe they all still meet there. As if maybe someday Sasuke may be there when he arrives, the way he always was.

Sakura follows him when she wakes, and he is always staring into the sky until the moment she calls his name.

He looks at her and calls her "Sakura-chan," and he tells her she is pretty as usual, and then he asks her where Sasuke is.

Some days, Sakura isn't cruel enough to tell him that Sasuke is dead.

And other days, she is cruel enough to tell Naruto that he is the one who killed him.

* * *

Naruto is not, as he has been whispered and rumored to be, Sakura's replacement for Sasuke.

Her name is Uzumaki Sakura, and believe it or not, she is proud of that fact. She does not see the need to defend her choice in marrying Naruto to anyone, not even Naruto himself.

Because he does ask.

Every now and then, his voice thin and soft and out of the darkness. He seemed terrified to ask in the daylight, yet at night, he has asked her, "Did you only marry me because you couldn't have Sasuke?"

Sakura used to tell him, when they were a little younger and she was a lot more bitter, that he couldn't have replaced Sasuke if he tried. She hates him, for pulses of a second, for asking at all. It hurts her and she can't help but want to hurt him back.

She tells him now, "If you have to attack me about why I married you, you shouldn't have asked me at all."

She's never questioned why he proposed to her. He seems to always question why she said yes.

Naruto asks her, expects her to have an answer and she'll never tell him that she doesn't know.

* * *

A Hokage should visit the memorial stone more often than Naruto does.

He has been told, on more than one occasion by the village elders, that he needs to visit the memorial and pay some respect to the Shinobi that died in protecting everything about the village that Naruto loved. He has told them, on more than one occasion, rather politely, exactly what they could do that would make him far more happy to visit the memorial and they laughed in his face.

It isn't that he's disrespectful or ignorant of the sacrifices ninja have made for him and all the Hokage who came before him, it's just that...

"It's not easy," Sakura whispered to him once, the last time they had gone. She had reached for his hand in a rare moment of affection, maybe of need, or maybe to comfort him or comfort herself...but she had done it nonetheless. Her hands were soft and she had looked_ beautiful _that day and he always wondered why he'd never told her so at the time. "It's not easy to look at that thing and not see his name. Maybe I'm just being selfish..."

_We both are._

Uchiha Sasuke died while he was still classified as a missing-nin, a traitor to their village. He is not listed among the other dead on the cold, marble surface of the memorial. He never will be, despite Naruto's many requests.

And only because no one else in the world saw what he did. Even the others who were there – Sakura hadn't been, but Naruto had made a point of _telling_ her because it felt necessary that she, of all people, knew the truth – didn't see what he had seen, nor would have listened to him if he tried to tell them.

Even he hadn't understood what he'd seen at the time. Not until years after Sasuke's death did he finally grasp it, not that it mattered to anyone but he and Sakura anymore.

Naruto saw the Chidori falter in Sasuke's hand.

He watched as Sasuke smirked and aimed just a _fraction_ more to the left than he was supposed to, and yes, he watched as Sasuke died and told Naruto he was happier this way. He knows that Sasuke did not die a traitor.

Naruto squeezed her hand, trying to let her know that he understood, but it only seemed to remind her that she was holding his hand at all and she let go. He didn't notice, or at least he tried not to.

His blue gaze shifts, and for the thousandth time, he searched for a name on black stone that was never there.

* * *

Sakura knows what Naruto has done before he says a word.

In fact, there aren't any words between them for a long time. Night gathers around them and he stares at the ground while she stares at his hands.

His hands are covered in blood and she knows whose it is.

"Sakura," he whispers, "I'm sorry."

She wants to tell him it's all right, that he did his job and that it didn't matter because that wasn't the Sasuke they had known anyway. Yet, in Naruto's eyes, when he manages to lift them to hers, she sees that it was.

She realizes also that Naruto has never called her simply "Sakura" in all their lives, and it snaps something inside of her and she knows this isn't a dream.

Sasuke is dead. Naruto has killed him.

"It's okay," she tries, but her voice trembling and she knows she's sliding slowly to her knees. _It's not okay. You killed him, you killed our friend, you killed..._

"I killed the boy you loved, it_ isn't_ okay." Naruto says softly, voice bitter and angry, and he clenches his fists. "I'm sorry. He – he told me he was sorry. I mean, he wanted me to tell _you_ that he was...um."

Sakura didn't even blink but suddenly Naruto's arms are around her shoulders and their knees are pressed hard into the dirt. His face is buried in her hair, and he is whispering against her throat, "Sorry. I'm sorry."

"Naruto–"

"Do you hate me?"

She shuts her eyes. She is shaking in his arms and again, she _wants_ to tell him that she doesn't. That it really is okay.

"Yes," Sakura says, and even now, she knows she'll never forgive herself for the lie that feels like the truth.

* * *

There was a day, some sparse months after Tsunade informed him that she was dying, that Naruto lost his mind.

Not in any acceptable way, either. Ripping his apartment to shreds, shattering the memorial stone, killing himself, destroying the village of Konoha to the very stone foundation it was built on were all safe and _sane_ options compared to what he _did_...or what he allowed to happen. What he didn't stop, what he always – and _never_ – wanted, what he didn't regret and hated himself for anyway.

Sleeping with Haruno Sakura did not fall under his list of _acceptable_ ways of losing his fucking mind.

It was awkward and stupid and he _knows_ he hurt her but she didn't tell him that until after. He remembers asking her why she waited, insisting he would have stopped or whatever she wanted, and she had nothing to say in reply. He didn't ask the next thing he thought, despite his hunger for her sharp, painful truths, _Did you_ want _me to hurt you?_

It was a good thing, he thought a little later, that it had happened in his apartment because they ended up sitting there for hours afterward, never speaking and never looking at each other. She sat neatly at the edge of his bed for at least half the afternoon, completely still and silent, the sheet tugged around her chest and legs but leaving her shoulders and the curve of her back exposed.

Naruto remembers watching the light from his window stretch along her pale skin in warm, unreadable patterns and thinking, despite everything, that she was still the most beautiful girl he'd ever met. He said to her, for a reason he'll never understand, "I want to marry you."

She laughed quietly at that, pulled the sheet around her shoulders and looked at him as if he were a child. "Now that's a little unnecessary, Naruto."

"I'm serious," he murmured, edging closer to her on his narrow bed, "I love you."

_He told me to take care of you._

"Naruto..."

"Please."

Sakura sighed softly, rising and taking his sheet with her, only dropping it when she had her clothing in her hands. She turned to meet his gaze as she pulled her shirt over her head and she gave him the strangest smile he'd ever seen. Whispered, "I'll marry you," so quietly he wasn't even sure he'd heard her.

Naruto remembers thinking he could make her happy, bring her to love him, if he tried.

* * *

When Uzumaki Naruto was sixteen years old, he killed his best friend.

There were witnesses, of course, the team of ANBU ninja dispersed to stop Orochimaru before he was able to utilize the body of Uchiha Sasuke, and Orochimaru himself as well as any number of his minions. It was the only successful mission, of all that the Godaime Hokage had initiated, because it was the only time they had chosen to allow Naruto to come with them.

For a moment in time – the one moment it took to burn Sasuke's heart from his body – Naruto allowed himself to believe that it was_ not_ Sasuke he was killing. A toy of Orochimaru's, something nameless and new that meant _nothing_ to him, but then he felt the searing heat of his almost-brothers' blood on his hands that he began to wonder if it was his own heart he was tearing from his chest.

He remembers looking up at Orochimaru as Sasuke slumped forward into his arms, at his pallid face and wide eyes. Naruto remembers the expression he saw there, something of mixed disbelief and despair, the look of a man whose life's work was literally dying before his eyes and he could do nothing about it.

Naruto forgot that Orochimaru even existed when Sasuke began to speak.

He hadn't heard the boy's voice in so long he nearly wept from the harsh familiarity of it. Sasuke's shirt was soaked in red, bleeding so profusely it seemed that even the crimson of his Sharingan eyes bled out through his chest.

"Looks like this is the end, eh, Naruto?"

The words were thick and wet sounding, blood bubbled on his lips and slid down his chin. Naruto felt a sick, rising panic as he held his friend and wished to all the gods under the sun he had the power to stop Sasuke's bleeding. To stop him from dying, even when he was the one who had caused it.

"Don't talk, don't talk," he hissed urgently, "_Please,_ Sasuke, just–"

Sasuke smirked at him, and for another second, Naruto didn't see the blood and hear the young man's rattling breath, he was lost in their near-dead rivalry and grinned back.

"Cheer up, dumbass. You proved it. You're stronger." A bitter laugh followed the words and a deep shudder ran through his body. Naruto shook his head furiously, willing him to _shut up_ so he could think of something to _do_...

"Don't you fucking _die,_ Sasuke," he felt himself snarl, tightening his arms around slim shoulders and staring into widely-dilated eyes.

"Why not?" Sasuke managed to smirk again, and Naruto could feel the boy's body shaking so hard it seemed a miracle he was able to string words together at all. Felt every beating of his heart pump more wet heat between them and he wanted to scream. "I'm happy, if you'll believe it. I didn't die _his_ tool. I..." he trailed off, his gaze meeting Naruto's and narrowing slightly as if it were becoming hard to see. "I'm glad I didn't win. I didn't want to kill you again."

"You never killed me at all," Naruto laughed, a hollow sound, and Sasuke laughed until he coughed. Once, twice, and Naruto felt that same rising, panicked fear but the coughing subsided and Sasuke was still breathing.

"Came damn near close," he argued weakly, groaning and reaching toward the bloody mess that was his chest. Naruto cringed and urged him to lie more still. "I wasn't strong enough." He added after a moment, his speech growing more clumsy and blood was beginning to fleck his lips more quickly than Naruto could brush it away. "Tell Sakura...tell her I'm sorry, yeah? Take care of her."

No. No. No goodbyes, it wasn't _right..._

"Sasuke, I'm sorry, I'm so fucking _sorry_–"

"Oh shut up, just shut up," Sasuke spat, fingers clenching at Naruto's Jounin vest. Their eyes met once more, a quick brush of black and blue, and Sasuke sighed, coughing hard until there was more blood on his chin than clean skin. He said, thoughtfully, more to himself than anyone, "You _are_ something like a brother, aren't you?" He shut his eyes with a long-suffering groan. "Just my luck to have _two_ brothers who want me dead, one way or another."

Naruto pleaded with him then, just to be_ quiet_ and hold _still_ because he was scared and didn't know how to help him and wanted to more than anything.

And then their eyes met, just this last time, and Sasuke smiled up at him and said, "Still the best brother I've ever had, I guess. Brothers are fucking _annoying,_ aren't they?"

Naruto shut his eyes to laugh, whispering, "Yeah,"

He opened his eyes only to see that Sasuke had stopped bleeding.

* * *

As the Hokage, there are very few times that Naruto himself is called out to perform everyday missions in the name of Konoha.

The missions that he _does_ take part in, however, are often so dangerous and secretive that not even Sakura dares ask where he's going or what he's been asked to do.

She helps him assemble his armor and weapons, hands him the most powerful of his scrolls and watches his solemn expression shift into a gentle, reassuring smile that doesn't reassure her at all...and she doesn't know what to say. Or, more specifically, she doesn't know how to say it.

After telling Naruto that she _hated_ him all those years ago, how can she tell him to be careful, that she's worried and afraid, and (of all things) that she wants him to come home safely? How can she say the words she wants to say, how can she bring herself to whisper, "I don't know what I'll do without you," even though it's true?

And so she kisses him softly instead, holds his face in her hands and tries to smile.

"Good luck," is all she can manage to say, and maybe for now, it's enough.

There are days when Sakura does not hate Naruto.

As a matter of fact, these days far outnumber the days when she _does_, it's just that _Naruto _doesn't know that, and she hasn't seen fit to inform him otherwise. On these days, she isn't sure what she feels for Naruto at all.

On these days, she'll look at him and sometimes he'll smile at her, and sometimes...sometimes she smiles back.

Sometimes she'll reach for his hand when it almost seems to her that he's shaking.

Sometimes she'll tell him everything's all right when it isn't, and sometimes she'll promise to stay awake with him when his nightmares are so bad he can't bear to shut his eyes again.

And that isn't hate. She isn't so sure it's love, either. She doesn't know what it is and sometimes she thinks it doesn't matter.

Naruto does not like to ask her if she loves him. She never tells him the truth even when he does.

Sakura does not like to ask him if he loves her, even though the answer is written on his face every single time he looks upon hers, because some things are better left unsaid and still completely understood. She has not heard the words since the day he asked her to marry him.

And Sakura...isn't sure, on these days.

She does not hate Naruto, not completely, not all the time. She is also not entirely sure she loves him, either. She is only sure of one thing in the end.

Sakura wants nothing more or less for her life, be it love or hate or nothing at all.


End file.
